Luxury and Sustainability: A Paradox on the Road towards Convergence

The changing landscape of the luxury industry has raised acute interest among scholars. In this context especially the topic of corporate sustainability has high potential for debate. The growing interest in sustainability in the luxury sector has thus triggered the author to investigate how the consumer makes sense of sustainability in the luxury industry. So far literature suggests one consumer perception to exist concerning the chosen issue, which can be referred to as ‘the paradox’. This can be defined as consumers having a conflicting image of the two concepts, luxury and sustainability, perceiving them to be opposing. On the other hand, recent scholarly works that do not take the consumer perspective into account talk about a possible convergence of the concepts. 14 semi-­‐structured in-­‐depth interviews with luxury consumers were conducted in order to investigate their current viewpoint on the proposed issue. To be able to provide an in-­‐depth understanding of the sense making process, the author specifically looked at three major aspects: 1) the existing knowledge about the paradox, 2) whether or not an attitude-­‐behaviour gap exists and 3) the benefits of improved communication strategies. This research does acknowledge consumer recognition of the paradox. However, the most important finding is a more nuanced way of seeing the relationship. A second consumer perspective is added to existing literature, namely a positive correlation between the two concepts, which makes the luxury industry a candidate for acting as a pioneer for sustainability. By adding the second consumer perspective this research acts as a bridge between the scholarly viewpoint and the consumer viewpoint and evidently predicts a possible future for the concept of sustainability in the luxury fashion industry. This future is mainly based on intensified communication, which helps the paradox to fade away in the consumers mind and closes the existing attitude-­‐behaviour gap. In combination this can potentially lead to a change in the consumers mind set, which will finally lead towards a shift of societal norms. Consequently, this research proposes that through intensified communication the existing paradox will find itself on a road towards convergence -­‐ a road towards sustainable luxury.